Learn me please - high end video cards

[Ebronco1968]

I have a question as to how the passmark test applies to rl gaming on the high end video cards.

I play quite a varity of mmo's and first person shooters and would like to know how the GTX 480/470 and ATI 58/5970 really compare for playing those games.

I see that they are like the top 4 but how close to rl gaming is the passmark test?

If someone could enlighten me I would greatly appreciate it. I is afeared of buying the wrong video card

Thanks
Ebronco1968

[David (PassMark)]

If you are buying a video card just to play a particaular couple of games, then you should search out benchmarks for those particaulr games. Different games will place different load on the CPU, GPU & RAM. It might be that a faster video card will be of little use for a particaular game unless you also upgrade your CPU for example.

The video card benchmark scores on our site give a general indication of GPU processing power. They won't exactly match the performance of any particaular game.

[Ebronco1968]

Here is what I'm thinking of using for my new computer. It will be used for a varity of games. So I won't be able to optimize for just a few. If you could tell me what you think and give me any thoughts on what Vid Card you think would fit my needs I would apprecaite it.

MB: ASUS Rampage III Extreme LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel
CPU: Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition Gulftown 3.33Ghz
Ram: 6 X 2GB G.SKILL trident 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM (PC3 16000)
Main Drive: Kingston SSDNow V+ Series SNVP325-S2B/128GB
OS: Windows 7 Extreme Edition
VC: ? lol Not looking to spend the money on the 4gb cards but the above mentioned are in my price range. I'm getting two but will not be running SLI/Xfire and will be running four monitors.

So going on that if you have any recommendations let me know.

Thanks
Ebronco1968

[David (PassMark)]

You might need a 2nd larger HDD. As 128GB is pretty small by todays standards.

Do you really need 4 monitors? Most games won't support 4. And for those that do, 3 in generally a better option (due to the monitor bevels).

3 monitors with AMD Eyefinity might make some sense.
http://sites.amd.com/us/underground/...eyefinity.aspx

All the cards you mentioned should give good performance.

[Ebronco1968]

I'll be using 3 monitors for one of the games I play, the forth will be just to browse the internet mainly, though I will be able to use 4 in that game also..

The SSD drive is just for my boot and game disk, I'll be running 2 1tb drives for all other information.